EMC CNC recommendations

[John Murphy <john-at-wyosip.com>]

Hello EMC'ers,

I'm a long time linux hand who is planning on adapting a benchtop
mill to CNC.  I currently run slackware 7.0 on the system I'm planning
to
run EMC on.  I'm pretty new to CNC and was hoping someone could
offer some suggestions to make my startup a little easier.  I'll be
documenting my process so hopefully others can benefit too.

1)  Is there any favored or problem linux distribution for EMC/RtLinux?
    I'd perfer to use slackware or debian, but I'm open.

2)  Is a particular version of the RTLinux extensions favored or
particulary troublesome?

3)  I've got a decent way to generate DXF's under linux, anybody
have recommendations on producing G code (for EMC) either directly
from a linux based CAD or a Linux (or DOS(emu)) DXF to G code 
converter?

Thanks,
John Murphy